Text for the curators of Horn Please, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Switzerland
http://picasaweb.google.com/vasudhathozhur/ListeningPost?authkey=JKygvF-3_YE#
My show in March 2001 was entitled Secret Life. The accompanying text in normal circumstances would have been in the form of a catalogue. Instead, I made an audio CD, of readings from my journals over four years, 1997 – 2001. They are reflections on work, life, anecdotes, bits of poetry, and other excerpts from my own writings; meant to be heard through headphones (in the gallery) so as not to intrude into viewing space. Not quite secret, but as something between two people.
They were also meant to make the vital connection between life and art, easy to forget during times like these when the kind of visibility demanded of the arts exerts a pressure to remain onstage till performance deteriorates into posturing. I was amazed that it was so much cheaper (!!!) than printing a catalogue – the visuals were the paintings themselves – a perfect solution to lack of funds.
Five years went by, the pages of several journals filled, but I didn’t actually record the text. A project in Ahmedabad, post-rightwing pogroms in Gujarat in 2002, took up a lot of time and energy, to the extent that I also had stopped reflecting so much on my inner life.
As part of this project, I had worked with a friend, an architect, Sarosh Anklesaria, who designed and helped execute the bamboo structure under which the project unfolded.
I had earlier given him a copy of the voice recording, as a gift, and during one of our several meetings had casually discussed the possibility of creating a station/stations which would provide people with the equipment and the comfort for listening.
Sarosh was in favour of using wood; I couldn’t conceive of something which would block the vision, especially in a space meant for viewing paintings. Transparency was an important requirement – as it is in my painting, in terms of process. With listening post, it becomes a physical reality, along with the play of light and reflection that it brings into being – the choice of material is governed by this consideration. The dimensions as well, and the height–low enough not to come in the way. Sarosh suggested a series, rather than a single post. Then followed the idea of a tableau, four stations that would support the body in different ways, different postures that would dramatize the stillness of listening without shattering it.
Research in terms of how and where to have it made took several months, but with expert help, it materialized the way it was envisioned.
We decided on sheet acrylic, and began the initial investigations in Ahmedabad, where Sarosh’s practice is based; a laborious process of trial and error followed.
Work began in mid-2006 when the required funds materialized. We had located Ramesh Kavalanekar, who worked with sheet acrylic, but he did not have the facilities to bend sheets of the thickness that was necessary – 20mm. He in turn introduced us to Acros, a firm that had initially dealt with acrylic, but had diversified into other fields. Sunil and Sanjay Shah have a factory in Samalia village, in the direction of Padra, and the kiln that is essential to what we needed to do.
Text has been an essential part of my work for years, sometimes readable, sometimes obscure, and mostly hieroglyphic in nature. In appearance it resembles many languages, but in actuality is something between written script and painted image, aught/frozen in the process of working towards a recognizable logic /continuity. Within the context of my work it refers back, and forth to certain moments/times and to paintings and thought-forms created at these moments/times. It is therefore crucial to the weaving of a memory which does not lose its depth at the point that it is communicated – memory is used as an instrument in the creation of a layered continuity. A painting cannot change physically, but aspects of it can project themselves into future thinking and processing. These unknown possibilities enable one to return to the same painting repeatedly, without ennui, in anticipation of future paintings that are created in the minds eye in the viewing of it.
We decided to use these hieroglyphs as references in terms of the shapes that the pieces would take, apart from the ergonomic considerations of seating or supporting the body. It seemed relevant also from the point of view that the stations were meant to facilitate listening to spoken text. Text as translated into form, as translated into sound. The text/sound pertaining to the origin and use of the visual language, through lived experience.
Thinking about the listener, I felt that she/he should have more a choice of things to listen to – somehow it seemed rather egocentric to limit the repertoire to my own writing.
I spoke to a friend about it, we discussed the fact that the term ‘listening post’ was also applicable to military surveillance systems that picked up electronically transmitted messages based on key words that were identified as suspicious. This seemed to widen the implications considerably.
To allow another into that very fragile/complex space of one’s own creative practice requires trust.
I remembered a friend, Sandeep Bhagwati, a composer of contemporary music who also worked with other media, and invited him to contribute a piece, based on written and photographic material that I sent him.
A short note pertaining to the same:
This is a piece from a series of conceptual or meta-compositions
called "private parts". In this series, composer Sandeep Bhagwati experiments with different forms of locating music beyond the listener/performer paradigm. In this particular piece "old tunes-new tunes", the performer is the listener and vice versa, following a musical score that everyone can read and execute. The score evokes the same questions that many western classical scores abound with: What do we remember of a melody? How does our memory of melodies shape a large-scale composition? How do different melodies overlap and influence each other ? How does one deal with new and intrusive musical ideas in an established stream of music? In fact, there would be no long compositions in Western music without these questions, and every score is an attempt to answer them in an unique manner. In "old
tunes-new tunes", there is no expert composer writing an orchestra score, but a lay singer singing to no other audience but her/himself.
Yet the questions remain the same - and in following the instructions faithfully, you can experience what it must be like to compose a symphony - from the inside of the creative process.
I wrote a note that I sent to those that I thought might be interested:
Dear friends,
This is to invite you for the opening of my solo show of paintings on the 23rd of April, at Sakshi Gallery, Tanna House, Colaba, (near Regal Cinema/ Sahakari Bhandar).
I have included a sound installation, entitled ‘Listening Post’, consisting of 4 stations in separate rooms where one can listen to different kinds of recordings. A friend has contributed an interactive piece, which might be of interest to those involved in theatre/performance/related disciplines. I am attaching a file which would give you the necessary information. We hope to collect a set of recordings from participants which would later be composed into pieces of music/sound, and form part of the repertoire of Listening Post in future.
We decided to request participants to leave recordings of their voices on an audio tape, and to write in a notepad provided for the purpose.
The posts would be put into different rooms, to accord them the privacy required for the exercise. The recordings and jottings would add to the written material available at the post; it could further be processed or composed. It could also result in a publication, consisting of photographs, text, multiple voices and trajectories; thought/material that finds expression while still resisting classification.
The show closed in Bombay , and was scheduled to open on the 14th of May at the Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi . On the 9th of May, rightwing elements hit the news again in Baroda , through the act of physically abusing and imprisoning a young student of printmaking for allegedly making obscene art works.
There were two small cubicles at the gallery that were perfect for
individual stations; they also provided the required privacy that had been lacking in the gallery in Bombay . Just before leaving Baroda , I had sections of my studio walls – with the paint stains and the graffiti - photographed and printed on silk – four prints measuring 7 and 1/2 ft by 3. They were put into the cubicles, relieving the pristine walls of their purity, bringing something of my home into the space.
It was also difficult to go about business as usual with the upheaval that was taking place within the artists’ community, and in our relationship with the current socio-political conditions within Gujarat . I added yet another component to LP, as below.
In the light of current events in Baroda , following the arrest and imprisonment of a young art student from the Faculty of Fine Arts, we wish to express our solidarity with friends and colleagues who have been forced into direct confrontation with right wing/fascist elements in the city.
Freedom of expression goes with a certain responsibility, yes, but it works both ways – or in several ways.
Increasingly, in Gujarat , there seems to be only one way.
We invite you to treat this space as your own, and request your views on a predicament that is assuming a nation-wide urgency.
You could paint or write on the walls of this cubicle, and make recordings of what you wish to say in a one-touch recorder provided at any of the four Listening Posts. The material generated will be compiled into a living document of continuing dissent against forces which seek to curtail create expression – and life.
We left a set of aerosol paints, crayons and markers that people could use. There were several contributions on the opening evening. A group of children came in one day and covered several yards of canvas with paintings.
And so on.
Sandeep’s piece seems to require time and concentration on the part of the viewer/listener. I am still thinking about how one can optimize these requirements. The exercise in itself is something that I find important – interactivity is a much abused term, it has lost its meaning and seems merely to imply a momentary participation in an amusing game. It is actually more than that - a move against passive spectatorship and the kind of consumerism that it promotes.
Much of my own work, in painting or in other media, is about revealing or unmasking: creating several transparent filters through which to deconstruct and view the many facets of what one engages with in order to create language; to lead the viewer from the public realms of memory into the inner space of the creative process, (to use Sandeep’s words), in a game of free association, thereby engendering the kind of understanding that binds performer and spectator in an intimate embrace, and the most fertile.
Vasudha Thozhur
June 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment